Seven people, including the young Mr. Parker, died in the fire, while dozens more were injured, according to John Stark Bellamy, II, a former history specialist with the Cuyahoga County Public Library who documented the events in the book “They Died Crawling.”

But the 1908 Kresge fire also belongs to a longstanding and macabre American tradition: Independence Day celebrations marred by discord, injury and, sometimes, death.

“It was total mayhem in the run-up up to the Fourth — and including the Fourth — every year,” Mr. Bellamy said of the holiday celebrations at that time. “Generally what you would find on July 5th was things that looked like casualty lists of all the people who had their hands blown off.”

Just last year, the New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul seriously injured his right hand while handling a firework, a story he shares in a new video released this week by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has regulated the sale of fireworks for decades.

#FireworksHurtCreditVideo by U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission

In the month around July 4th, an average of 230 people end up in emergency rooms each day with fireworks-related injuries, the agency reports.

In 2014, the safety commission recorded 11 nonoccupational, fireworks-related deaths, according to a report issued last year.

Four people died that year in house fires started by fireworks; seven died following direct impact from the explosive devices. From 2000 to 2014, there were an average of 7.1 fireworks-related deaths each year.

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New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul’s right hand a year after injuring it in an accident involving fireworks.CreditJulio Cortez/Associated Press

But the risks are nothing new. From the start, the festivities incorporated dangerous elements.

In it, he envisioned dazzling annual celebrations to mark the Continental Congress’s July 2nd approval of a resolution declaring the nation’s independence from the British crown.

“It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more,” he wrote.

In 1865, The New York Times wrote of “gangs of young men” roaming the streets with firearms, scaring the public and injuring themselves.

“That sundry of these reckless youth should have blown off their fingers and mutilated their hands was to be expected and perhaps pleasureably anticipated,” The Times reported, scornfully.

Such injuries soon became the norm in many parts of the country.

“The usual amount of accidents and incidents which always accompany the celebration of the Nation’s Birthday occurred yesterday,” The Cincinnati Daily Star reported on July 5, 1877.

A 17-year-old boy accidentally shot off his left pinkie; another boy lost his hand in an explosion; a 13-year-old girl died from an accidental gun discharge.

In 1880, several children suffered injuries in Washington, D.C., according to The Evening Star. A 4-year-old nearly lost his eye; a 12-year-old had his hand “badly shattered.”

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Most of the victims of accidents related to celebrations on July 4th, 1891, were children, The Pittsburgh Dispatch reported the following day.CreditLibrary of Congress

The long list of accidents in 1891 in one corner of Pennsylvania led a Pittsburgh Dispatch reporter to wonder in the course of writing whether it is worth celebrating the holiday “with such violent explosives.”

That year, someone threw a firecracker into 22-year-old Henry McClory’s can of gunpowder. It exploded, burning his eyes, singeing his hair and “disfiguring his face horribly,” the paper reported.

Ella McKern lost her right hand when an explosive landed on her arm as she carried a baby. Benny Callahan had his “hand torn off by a cannon cracker,” leading to an amputation of his arm at the wrist.

The push for a “safe and sane” Independence Day celebration was well-known enough by 1914 that it was the subject of this comic, which appeared in the July 12 edition of The Anderson Daily Intelligencer in Anderson, S.C.CreditLibrary of Congress

The American Medical Association began collecting data on the issue. It documented more than 1,500 deaths and more than 33,000 injuries connected to the holiday from 1903 to 1910, according to news reports of the time.

In the end, individual accidents and larger tragedies like the one in Cleveland helped to accelerate the movement.

Within days of the Kresge fire, the Cleveland City Council approved an ordinance — possibly the nation’s first — banning the sale or possession of fireworks within city limits, according to Mr. Bellamy’s research.

“This landmark legislation and the tragedy that precipitated it were important milestones in the movement, ultimately nationwide, to end the annual toll of deaths and injuries due to fireworks,” he wrote.

By 1910, similar policies were in place in Baltimore, Washington, St. Petersburg, Fla., and several other cities. A year later, President William Howard Taft visited Ohio and endorsed the idea, helping to mitigate the unfortunate side effects of Independence Day injuries.